How should we talk about our thinnest celebrities?

Lately, I have been unable to avoid either seeing Ariana Grande’s body or seeing people talk about her body with varying shades of concern and condemnation. Her body is blown up to be 30 feet tall on the AMC Theatres screen where I saw the sequel to Wicked and shrunk to 11 inches as a Barbie doll bearing her likeness. Her frame, with corsets cinching her waist and gemstones adorning her collarbones, is plastered across billboards and buses and in between posts on my FYP on the most popular apps. She is simultaneously being advertised as the pinnacle of beauty while people on the internet are bemoaning her thinness, some out of genuine concern about how she could be negatively influencing the young girls who adore her. 

A large part of me agreed with this concern, but something about the discourse didn’t sit right. Maybe it was the casual cruelty and dehumanization that accompanied many of the observations about Grande’s thinness, a style of “stan culture” that reinforces the objectification of pop stars above all else. Maybe it was the feeling that none of this is about helping Grande at all, nor about improving a culture that encourages eating disorders, but rather about asserting some form of intellectual superiority. “You people would ‘it’s not okay to comment on women’s bodies and she’s always been skinny’ Karen Carpenter,” read one viral post, referencing the 1970s singer who died of complications from anorexia. But, as a reply pointed out, “I’m sure calling Karen Carpenter a freaky skeleton on Twitter would have done wonders for her recovery. Just be haters if you wanna be. Why act noble about it?”

To further evaluate whether this discourse was helping or hurting, I spoke to Samantha DeCaro, a licensed psychologist and the Director of Clinical Outreach and Education for the Renfrew Center, which was the first residential treatment center for eating disorders. I didn’t talk to DeCaro about Grande’s body. I talked to her about the broader contours of the discourse, one that has targeted many different public figures. And what she told me really challenged my thinking around this issue, starting with a stark reality.

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